In the Balance
by freudian fuckup
Summary: Sirius is informed of Regulus's death, but Remus is left to deal with the aftermath.


A crack of apparation and then he is left alone with this new, dangerous creature

A crack of disapparation and Remus is alone with this new, dangerous creature. Sirius is sitting on the couch, his silhouette like crumpled paper against the backlighting of a yellowy street lamp. There is something tight and unstable about the way his jaw is set, the way his fingers twitch against the torn denim of his jeans, the way his eyes are not really looking at the stain on the wall, but at something beyond it, something Remus cannot see—is not meant to see.

"Bloody hell."

Remus opens his mouth but can't make any sound come out.

Sirius grins. It's a terrifying, hollow expression, and it makes Remus's skin crawl.

"...Sirius?" He says, quietly. Slowly. With no sudden movements.

"Stupid prat. Stupid sodding prat. He should have known better, should have kept sucking off whoever his _Master_ told him to. He should have, should have known he couldn't just up and bloody _leave_."

"Sirius," Remus says again, this time louder, trying to draw him out of whatever insane reverie he is slipping into. It's what Sirius does when he doesn't know what else to do— he gets very loud and smiles a lot and curses more than normal.

Remus had expected more noise, more violence, but this, this boisterous denial, it is infinitely worse.

The movement is not a surprise. Remus imagines he could see it in the line of Sirius' shoulder a split-second before it happened. The vase flies across the room in a graceless arc and hits the wall with a hollow _thump_, then crashes to the ground, in pieces. The shattering sound hangs in the air for a moment, and then there is silence.

And then a sound.

The word is so faint, so quiet, it could be mistaken for a careless breath, but Remus _knows_, and he's at Sirius' side before the final syllable falls.

"_Regulus_."

It tumbles into the room.

Sirius had known it was coming. He had to have known. But Sirius always had a way of ignoring the inevitable, it's how he keeps going when all Remus can do is close his eyes. He had to have known, but Remus can see now that it doesn't matter, not at all.

Remus eases himself onto the couch, sitting close-but-not-too-close at Sirius' side. He is like a wounded animal, and Remus knows better than to push. For all that they are to each other, for all the fire and terrifying feeling they spark when their skin touches, Remus knows that he is no match for the bone-deep, echoing pain he can see in the set of Sirius' mouth. He sees it in the stiffness of Sirius' wrists, in the deliberateness with which he blinks. If Remus knows one thing, it is Sirius Black, and this is a Sirius that is to be handled with care.

Suddenly, Sirius turns on him. It is not so sudden, actually, the turn of his head and the shift of his eyes from the wall-that-is-not-there to Remus' face, but the motion startles Remus. Sirius' eyes are strange and wide, and he looks ohsoveryyoung, with fringe falling across his eyes and a sickeningly half-smile tugging relentlessly at his lips. He is terrifying.

Remus can feel his pulse rattle in his ears, a heavy staccato of fear and grief and aching sympathy. It is strange, Remus decides, to feel _for_ someone else. As though the emotion that needs feeling is simply too large for one person, so it spills over and seeps into anyone willing to take it. Remus wishes he were a sponge, wishes he could soak it in and siphon it away from Sirius' eyes, his goddamn tooyoung eyes.

And now Sirius is just looking at him, as though there were anything in the world Remus could do, as though he would not have done it already, a million times over. Remus' arm trembles as he lifts it, moves his hand slowly toward Sirius' face, as though he were moving through water. With the calloused bulb of his thumb, Remus traces the outline of Sirius' jaw, the stubbly friction and the smooth, boyish skin. His index finger he runs beneath Sirius' lower lip, feeling warm breath on his wrist as his joints flex and twist in a steady, tensed movement. He lets his fingers find Sirius, peel away the bitter shell and expose the raw boy that hides beneath.

There are questions in these motions. Questions like _what do I do now? _and _are you going to be the same again? _and _how much longer can this go on?_ Childlike questions, questions that can never be said but are always felt, as though they linger on the edge of hearing, at the corners of their mouths. And suddenly (this time, with real suddenness) Sirius opens his mouth and closes it and opens it again, air rushing from his lungs with the force of a freight train, and the air is shaped like "_Moony_," and before Remus knows what he's done, he is trying so desperately to make the horrible, broken sound stop that he has his lips on Sirius' lips, his air in Sirius' mouth.

"Oh gods, Moony," Sirius whispers, his mouth a gash of black and pink on his aristocratic face. He looks like a Black, just then, and the irony of it makes Remus forget to breathe. Something broken and battered, like a scream and a sob, wrenches itself for Sirius' lungs. It is fierce and primal and utterly horrible. And Remus kisses him again, harder this time, and faster, and longer. He kisses Sirius like he is sealing the hole in a broken dike. He kisses Sirius like he can think of nothing else to do.

The sound stops.

Sirius pulls away and comes closer in one motion, so that their foreheads touch. His lips are red. There is a raw place on the bottom one that might be bleeding. Slowly, he wraps himself around Remus. Remus can feel the urgency in Sirius' fingers as they twist in his shirt. He can do nothing but shift and lean so that Sirius is lying against him on the narrow couch, legs and elbows awkwardly joined, his face staring up at Remus' so that he looks like a corpse. The thought is so wrong, so disturbing that Remus forces himself to dwell on it.

_It could have been him. It could just as easily have been him. A few genes one way or the other, and it could have been him._

Sirius stares. He alternates lying statue-still and shaking uncontrollably, his eyes wet and wide. Remus feels as though he is holding a live explosive.

Night passes.

At dawn, there is a stillness, a stagnation in the air. Their limbs are intertwined like some organic jig-saw puzzle, with Remus's hand on the back of Sirius's head and Sirius's knees shoved between Remus's legs. The sun eking over the horizon reddens their skin like war-paint, but they are not warriors. They are teenagers on the razor's edge of adulthood, that frightening, bottomless chasm, and Remus knows in the marrow of his aching bones that this will be enough to send them tumbling. Another loss. He's traded so much already: peace, safety, sanity. And for what? Pools of black beneath each eye and the taste of Sirius's skin in the dark? These things seem like foolish acquisitions, but the thought of losing—it's too much to consider, and in the end, perhaps that's what matters.

Sirius stirs, his hands grasping Remus's shirt as he hangs in the balance between dreams of hope and waking destruction. He settles back into sleep and Remus watches his brow furrow and fuss. Perhaps dreams are no longer safe, either. But at least dreams can be forgotten upon waking, while the horrors of the waking world are lost only upon dying.

Sirius mutters in his sleep, and Remus knows without hearing what syllables he is chanting.

"_Regulus_."


End file.
